Does McCain Need To Lay Off Ayers?
David Frum suggests that Republicans stop “waving the bloody shirt.”
But Obama? McCain’s attack on him is the equivalent of the William McKinley campaign attacking William Jennings Bryan for having kept company with Nathan Bedford Forrest decades after the Civil War. Yes, the old rebel was an unrepentant traitor. Mostly though, he was all washed up.
Republicans have been fighting this second American civil war for eleven election cycles now. It’s been a good run! But just as 19th-Century Republicans eventually ran out of Union generals from Ohio, so the modern Republican Party has bumped up against the statute of limitations on campaigns against hippies.
McCain needed a bigger message.
Mark Kirkorian adds:
I was just a kid during the 60s, but the very thought of Jane Fonda visiting Hanoi still fills me with physical disgust and if I ever ran into her I’d spit on the ground and turn away. But, justly or not, we’ve reached the point where waving the bloody shirt of 60s radicalism just doesn’t work any more.
I think Ayers is important. Ayers has never stopped being a radical, he’s never apologized for his bomb-setting ways, and Obama’s association with him and his radical views speaks volumes about Obama’s judgment and character.
But I do agree that McCain needs more than just Ayers to win this thing.
If McCain had more in the way of conservative policies that distinguished him as a limited government conservative, drawing a sharp distinction between him and the tax-and-spend Obama, he wouldn’t have to hang his hat on Ayers.
Which, again, is an important issue. But not enough of one to win an election on.
